Leave Your Heart When You Go to the Market | Blog | TravelBook

"You shop like a tourist," my sister admonished me once when I was sent for a pansit errand at the Baguio City Market and I bought instead purple cabbage, turmeric, sweet pepper, some lemon, and a Fred Perry shirt.

Shopping for necessities is not my strongest point, if you count the number of chicken or loaf bread I've had to return because they were past their expiration dates.

But ask me about the only place to buy double-yolk egg or single malt whiskey one-sixth their real price in Baguio and I will gladly bring you there. This is not a gift handed through amulets, but proof of the writer's truism: Know your Milieu.

The Baguio City Market is just an uphill street away from our house so I used to know all its nooks and crannies. I knew where to rent Tagalog Klasiks and Liwayway (at the Hilltop section) and where the blind drink tapuey (rice wine). But the city market has been rapidly changing, and so one needs to do a little mental remapping. Lot 3, where the tapuey used to be served, has already been demolished, our reading room long lost, and the thrift shop maintained by the Hans Voelke Foundation where I got my old New Yorker magazines and other Aryan thingamajigs long gone.

Two years ago, I thought of painting bayongs (the real ones woven from silag palm) as a community project for street children and I went all over the market, only to be told them there are no longer such things sold there. We had to make do with rice sack bags. But if you are really into organic packaging, you can try the huge natural jute sacks which are used to hold peanuts. These can be bought at the rice section.

The old Baguio market burned down in the 1950s and again in 1970. Parts of it have been burned in the past years. But I believe the old stone walls can still be seen behind some of the stalls.

And some old reliables are still there. Try  Garcia's Real Coffee and Umali Coffee between the chicken section and the Hangar section where you can buy Kalinga, Benguet and Sagada coffee. Or you can just stand there and sniff the fragrance of coffee beans being roasted while waiting for your co-shoppers. They have now added hazelnut, vanilla, mocha, house blend, caramel, butterscotch, Irish cream, and cinnamon nut flavors to their inventory. I still prefer though the dark roast Sagada medium.

For Abra and Ilocos muscovado (unprocessed sugar), you have to walk a few meters to the coconut section.

The Hangar section is where you buy your highland vegetables. You have to go to back, near the coconut section, for Ilocano vegetables.

The rice section is another old reliable. Look for indigenous varieties like the Ifugao tinawon, Benguet kintoman and Kalinga balatinao. These are more expensive than the usual varieties but not only are these organic, some varieties are harvested only once a year.

Behind the rice section, on the side of the souvenir and fruit section, are two stands selling herbs like wonsoy, tonsoy (watercress), basil, lemongrass, dill, mint, parsley, chives, watercress, and the Chinese shallots known as "sakorab."

For fruits, try to look for rattan or lituko.  These look like woven grapes and taste like sourballs. Also try masaflora or passion fruit, which are like huge orange eggs. Another fruit usually found in the Cordilleras is the red banana, which is similar to the ones used for banana cue but more aromatic.

The Sagada orange is also a must-buy. These are usually green and larger than the usual imported ones, but sweeter and juicier. Be careful about what's genuine or not. Vendors will offer you Sagada grapes, Sagada kiwi or Sagada apples. There are no such things yet.

Other fruits worth buying are the blackberries and gooseberries. There is also the occasional rhubarb, which you can use for jams. You might find a camote-like rootcrop called yacon, which is eaten raw and good for diabetic patients.

Try to look for the La Top outlet at the market but better yet, go to Café by the Ruins on Wednesday and Saturday because that is when organic veggies and products are sold. La Top is a consortium of different products so you can also try YSF products (achuete, chili garlic, skinless longanisa and garlic flakes), Mountain's Fresh honey and Cosmic Farms yoghurt and glutine. They also sell alugbati, watercress, paradise tea, sayote tops, arugula, and mushrooms. La Top uses year-round pricing, so their P110 per kilo price for watercress was higher during the summer but much cheaper with the advent of rains.

The Baguio Market, before it became the Baguio Stone Market, dealt mainly with tobacco, blankets, and dogs from the Ilocos region. The Baguio-Ilocos connection still survives, mostly at the Hilltop section where you can buy dried fish, bagoong, Ilocano vinegar and basi (Ilocano sugarcane wine). The Ilocano inabel (woven cloth) can be found at the Maharlika Center. Other woven products are cheap G-strings, Ibaloi skirts, and the like.

The Baguio market was also the hub of the mining industry during the Gold Rush before World War II. There are still small shops here where you can "cook" gold, thanks to the growing number of  small-scale mines (also known as camote mining) along the Kennon Road area. 

Silver shops along Maharlika Road like DL and Ibay's also harken back to that "precious" time. Silver was Baguio's first OTOP (one town one project), and for good reason. The high quality of filigreed and sterling silver jewelry produced here are among the best in the country, and certainly the cheapest, though they are now threatened by the babad-sa-kalamansi silver sold at Burnham or People's Park.

The tobacco area of the market is still there, and you can still get the ingredients of momma (pana leaf, betel nut, tobacco, and lime) here. Also, when we were young, this was where we bought Time and Newsweek Magazine without their mastheads (P5 each) and old copies of Bannawag, the Ilocano magazine coveted by our Hawaiian cousins.

Recently, we accompanied a UP professor to buy pasiking, or the rattan hunting backpacks, at the market. Our journey brought us to the top of Maharlika, where the antique shops are. This is also where you can buy your bul-uls (rice god statues), mortars, and other remnants of the old Cordillera material culture (or maybe their replicas).

Only a few tourists come here and if you look out the window, you will see the market chaos below. This was a far cry from what it was 100 years ago when it was built and when chuckwagons driven by bulls, muzzled dogs, Ilocano vendors selling inabel and tobacco, and an occasional American in a sharkskin suit were all you could see.

I used to say to my friends, "Go to the market and leave your heart behind."

Now I know why I said that. Because the Baguio City Market was where I left mine.

Click through to the next page for a list of other places to shop and items of note (still no ukay-ukay).

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